Page 32 - AVN March 2017

GAYVN
BUILDING THE BRAND
Four veterans offer ‘real-world solutions’
After getting off to a great start with two big parties, the 2017 GayVN@Internext moved into the
business realm with its first seminar, titled “Real-World Solutions: How to Build and Manage Your
Brand in Gay Porn.” Four veterans got together to offer their perspectives.
Jake Jaxson—CEO of Media Partners, a distribution and production company that owns
CockyBoys—started off by confessing his “love-hate relationship with the concept of ‘brand.’” A
director at his core, he focuses on whether he’s enjoying what he creates: “If I’m authentic and I’m
real and the people I’m working with feel that way too,” his work will connect with audiences.
Toby Morris of Falcon Studios Group—which encompasses four of the industry’s oldest brands:
Falcon, Raging Stallion, Hot House and Naked Sword—countered that viewpoint: “You have to
hone in on exactly what your customers are wanting.”
Douglas Richter, a cam model discovered by Chi Chi LaRue who has been in the live cam
sector for a dozen years, agreed: “You don’t own your brand. A brand is owned by the public.” To
differentiate ImLive’s Supermen.com, he honed in on serving an unmet need: “I wanted to build an
environment where men could go to find a certain kind of content…. and only see men who were
interested in performing live sex with men.”
Danny Z of WebMediaProz and ZBuckz talked about building a brand by finding an underserved
niche. He noticed there weren’t any gay Asian sites and went into that market for his first gay site,
and it “exploded.” Now with multiple sites he does cross marketing between the niches because
people who eat sushi regularly “might want to eat pizza one day.”
‘YOU DON’T OWN YOUR BRAND. A
BRAND IS OWNED BY THE PUBLIC.’
—DOUGLAS RICHTER, SUPERMEN.COM
GAYVN@INTERNEXT | By Sharan Street
Each concurred that customer taste is an important factor in another area: choosing which
models to work with. But their approaches differ. For Richter, offering a broad palette of types is
important. He watches the models who join the site, and if he sees an uptick in certain types, he
will create a new category to accommodate them. “I try to find a home for every guy who wants
to do this,” he said, whether they be twinks, bears, tattooed guys or BDSM aficionados. “I have to
help build individual stars’ brands.”
For Morris, he focuses on “delivering on the brand promise” with his contract stars. For Falcon
he looks for beautiful, fit men. “Muscled but not too muscled, because that would get into Raging
Stallion territory,” he said, adding, “Hot House is more clean cut.”
Jaxson, not surprisingly, focuses on personality first. “Because I has to work with them,” he said,
noting that he only signs one or two contracts a year. Joking about the reputation of his tight-knit
CockyBoys family, he asserted, “We’re not a cult.”
From the audience, director Chi Chi LaRue asked the question that haunts a lot of content
producers: How do you get millenials to pay for porn.
Jaxson noted his DVD sales “are through the roof compared to two years ago.” He said finding a
lower price point and “packing the DVDs with lots of value” was a big part of the sales puzzle.
Morris emphasized, “You need to cast your net over all the distribution channels.” For his
veteran brands, that ranges from online sales to the direct mail business, which is still strong.
Addressing the gloomy truth that direct mail will eventually decline as older consumers fade
away, Richter added an optimistic spin: “Every day people are dying ... every day people are turning
18.” The challenge is to “create a new brand for young guys.” ImLive has launched Sex.sex, where
the cost of live cams is treated like crowd funding. He’s sympathetic to the plight of millenials,
who “don’t have a lot to spend” and are burdened with costs that earlier generations didn’t have,
such as cell phone bills. But they also need to be educated: “By stealing they’re hurting us and also
hurting themselves, because eventually there will not be high-quality content.”
Pictured from left, Danny Z., Jake Jaxson, Douglas Richter and Toby Morris
32 | AVN.com | 3.17
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last year, when people that I had pretty much written off as either
[having] a bad attitude or just not being my cup of tea physically,
and then we end up having the best time, the best connections.
It’s taught me as a performer to shut my mouth and just have
faith.
What are some of the down sides of being a porn star?
BRENT CORRIGAN: There’s this ambassador program situation
that just automatically we all become inducted … sometimes you
just want to take that hat off. When I’m buying milk or I’m in the
gym and I’m trying to do some curls, I don’t want to be called out
in my sacred spaces.
JESSE JACKMAN: “I must say [living in] Boston has been a
blessing for us; people don’t recognize us here. It’s nice to have a
safe space. … We’re human beings. We need our own separation.”
DIRK CABER: There are some people who thrive in being in the
public eye and don’t need that. The Maverick men come to mind,
actually. They a lot of the time are their characters, even in social,
private situations. And they own it and they love it and they’re
great guys—they’re really good friends of ours. And I respect that
and I understand it but I could never do it.
What’s after porn? Is there an expiration date on this?
LIAM RILEY: Obviously I don’t want to model forever. Something
I’ve admired about Brent is that he’s broken into that mainstream
kind of space, and that’s something I’d love to do. At CockyBoys
they teach you also how to work behind the scenes. I know how
to package and distribute DVDs and hot-melt the DVD covers
onto them, which is the biggest bitch in the world. I would love
to learn PR and I love working in the spaces between straight and
gay porn. ... I just want to grow in the industry.
BRENT CORRIGAN: I think there’s a space for all of us when we’re
done. Whether it’s in this medium or whether it’s in any number
of avenues this leads to for us. Photographers, PR agents, anyone
who works behind the camera, on set, there is work for us. If you
really love the porn industry and you still are sex positive and you
have an optimistic mind for it, you should definitely find those
avenues. They’re pretty much open to all of us, especially those of
us who have been a beacon for positivity.
JJ KNIGHT: Unlike some performers, I did start with a college
degree before this. I got my degree in marketing. I did a full-time
job, I worked in Asia and did all that. I got tired of the retail
environment so I decided to do the one thing I had wanted to do
since I was 18. But unfortunately, being from the South, it’s not
exactly the best thing to tell your parents, that you’re going out
to shoot porn in California for a week. So I put that on the burner
for a while and I lived the all-American-boy life that they wanted.
And then made the move out to California, started all that. So
after this, I would love to do something with marketing for porn,
especially something for one of the porn studios. It would be a lot
of fun. I like the PR aspect of things, the photography.
DIRK CABER: People ask about “the career.” It isn’t really a
career. It’s something you do for extra cash and for fun. But very
few guys actually get enough work to be able to sustain their
life doing this. Most porn stars have a day job of some sort. We
know so many IT people, creative types. I’m a musician. There
are escorts, of course. … If you don’t come into porn having that
already under way and you don’t keep tabs on that while you’re
doing this—as in don’t give up your day job entirely—you don’t
end up with something that is yours to go further with when the
porn finally does run its course.
JESSE JACKMAN: It’s not a fair question for me because I had
a career before porn. I have a career now that’s in health care
that’s completely unrelated to porn, and I intend to have that
career when I’m done. So I have a built-in fallback plan. This was,
like Dirk said, for a little bit of extra money and for an amazing
experience that I figured if I don’t try it I’ll never know what it’s
like. So I do already have an exit plan, and it’s my entrance plan.
So I’ll continue doing this as long as it’s fun.